a return call—ceremonies—a dog-robbing suit—difficulties of conversation—a treat for the amah—the british ambassador at jehol in the eighteenth century—the last stages of decrepitude—glories of the park—the bronze temple—a flippant young chinese gentleman—“ladies' temple”—desolation and dirt and ruin—“happiness hall”—examining a barbarian.
the next day the secretary returned my call, bringing with him the general's card, and an apology for not coming himself. he was so very busy. i never expected him to come, and don't suppose he ever really intended to, but it was true chinese politeness to put it that way.
mr wu had sent to say he was coming to call upon me, and it surprised me to see the commotion such a little thing occasioned in the mission house. i felt they were really being awfully good to my guest, but, without taking away one jot from their kindliness, i think, too, they were very glad to be brought into friendly relations with the yamen, and i was very glad indeed to think that i, who was in outer darkness from their point of view, was able to do this little thing for them. cakes were made, the best tea got out, the table set, and the boy, who generally waited upon us humbler folk in a little short jacket and trousers caught in at the ankles, was put into the long coat, 284or petticoat, whichever you are pleased to call it, that a well-dressed chinese servant always wears. it seems it is not the correct thing for him to wait upon one in a little short jacket. and then when all was ready, and the small great man was announced, to my surprise the other two women were hustled out of sight, and i and the missionary received him alone. why, i do not know even now. i sat on a high chair, and so did mr wu, and the missionary gave us both tea and cakes, handing everything with both hands; that i believe is the correct chinese way of doing honour to your guest. i received it as a matter of course, said “thank you,” or “please don't bother,” whichever occurred to me, but mr wu was loud in his protestations, in both chinese and english, and i fancy the whole interview—unless i spoiled it—was conducted in a manner which reflected infinite credit upon the missionary's knowledge of chinese customs and the secretary's best manners. they certainly were very elaborate. this day he had on what one of my naval brothers was wont to designate a dog-robbing suit, though i don't know that he ever went out dog-robbing, and i am quite sure the young chinese gentleman never did, also his hair was neatly parted in the middle and plastered down on each side, and with a high collar and tie on, he looked really as uncomfortable and outr?? as it was possible to look. he had brought me the tickets, and implored me if i wanted anything else to ask for it. the interview was a trial to me. it is all very well to be prepared to smile, but smiles don't really fill up more than a minute or two, and what on earth to say during the rest of the time, troubled me. in all the wide world, and i felt it acutely, we had absolutely nothing in common save those tickets, and my heart sank when he told me he would do himself the honour of showing me over the palace himself. if i felt half an hour with him, for all my gratitude for his kindliness, an intolerable burden, what on earth should i feel the livelong day. one piece of news he did tell us, there had been fighting in mongolia, severe fighting, and many men had been killed, but when we came to ask which side had won he said he did not know, and then of course we guessed the chinese had suffered a reverse, for if the telegraph could tell any details at all, it was sure to have told the all-important one which side was the conqueror. at last, when it seemed that hour had been interminable, the young man rose, and the farewells began.
0399
those chinese farewells! chinese etiquette is enough to cure the most enthusiastic believer in form and ceremony, to reduce him to the belief that a simple statement of fact, a “yea, yea,” and “nay, nay,” are amply sufficient. i suppose all this form and ceremony, this useless form and ceremony, comes from the over-civilisation of china. if ever in the future i am inclined to cavil at abrupt modern manners, i shall think of that young man protesting that the missionary must not come to the gate with him, when all the while he knew he would have been deeply offended if he had not. i fear lest i may now swing over to the other side and say that a rude abruptness is a sign of life, so much better does it seem to me than the long elaborate and meaningless politeness that hampers one so much.
when he had gone we discussed the question of a visit to the imperial park, and then i found that 286there were many things in the way of my entertaining my hosts, prayer meetings, dispensary afternoons, visits, and that in any case, only the women would accompany me, whether that was really because the men were busy, or because it was not chinese etiquette for men and women to amuse themselves together i do not know, but i strongly suspect the latter had something to do with it. for of course what the foreigners did, more especially the new foreign woman, who was not a missionary, was a matter of common talk in all the district round. then my hostess put it to me, as i had plenty of tickets and to spare, would i take their amah. she was most anxious to go. she had been in service with a manchu family, and once when they were going she had been ill, and once it had rained so that she had never gone, and she was getting an old woman and feared her chances were dwindling sadly.
it was such a little thing to want, and yet i don't know. when i looked at the hideous town, for cheng teh fu remains in my mind as the ugliest chinese town i have ever seen it had not the charm and fascination that walls give, when i thought of the delights that lay hidden behind the fifteen miles of high wall that surround the park, the delights that are for so very, very few, i did not wonder that the manchu woman, who already counted herself old, she was forty-five, should have been very anxious to go inside. and when i told her i would take her, she immediately begged leave to go away and put on her best clothes. i couldn't see any difference between her best clothes and her everyday clothes, but i could see she had a small shaven grandchild in attendance, who was immediately put on to carry my umbrella. i suppose she hoped to smuggle him in to see the delights, and i said nothing, for i had plenty of tickets.
curiously enough, while most of china has been a sealed book, the hunting palace—it is really better described as a lodge—of the manchus has been known to the english for one hundred and twenty years, for it was here that, on the 9th september, 1793, the emperor ch'ien lung received lord macartney, the first british ambassador to china. i did not come straight from peking, but i know that the road, by valley and mountain pass, is reckoned very bad indeed, and very few people as yet take the trouble to go to jehol. it is four and a half days' hard travelling now, but lord macartney took seven, and it is a curious commentary upon the state of the roads in the british isles in those days that though his chronicler, sir george staunton, writing of the journey, complains a little of the roads, and mentions that lord macartney's carriage, which he had brought out from england with him, had generally to be dragged along empty, while the “embassador” himself rode in a palankeen, he does not make much moan about them; no one reading his account would think they were so appalling as they must have been, for i cannot think they have deteriorated much since those days. when i looked at the streets of cheng teh fu, banks, dust heaps, great holes, stones, i tried to imagine the british “embassador's” coach being dragged across them, twisting round corners, balancing on sidings, up to the axles in dust, or perhaps mud, for it was september and the crowd looking on at the lord from the far islands of the sea, who was bringing tribute to the emperor of china, 288for i am afraid it is hardly likely they believed he was doing anything else.
another thing sir george staunton notes is the scarcity of timber. “the circumjacent hills,” he writes, “appeared to have been once well planted with trees; but those few which remained were stunted, and timber has become very scarce. no young plantations had been made to supply the old ones cut down.” now the hills round are absolutely bare, there is not a sign that ever a tree has grown upon them, and i should not have believed they had, had it not been for sir george staunton's account.
and on the other side of this ugly town, among these desolate hills, is set a wall, a wall about twenty feet high, with a broad pathway on the top, along which the guards might walk. and the wall has been built with discretion. not only was it to keep out all but the elect, but it was to block effectually all view of what went on inside. not even from the neighbouring hills is it possible to look into that park. its delights were only for the son of heaven and those who ministered to his well-being.
we went along a sordid, dusty street to the principal gate, a shabby and forlorn-looking gate, and the watch-tower over it was crumbling to decay, and we entered the courtyard, a forlorn and desolate courtyard, where the paving-stones were broken, and the grass and weeds were coming up between the cracks. then there was a long pathway with a broken pavement in the middle, a pavement so characteristic of china that wherever i chance to see such i shall think of her golden sunshine and bright skies. on either side of that pathway were high walls over which were peeping the tiled roofs of 289buildings, until at last after fully five minutes' walk, after passing through many gates, all in various stages of decay, we came to a place where the path ended with two doors to the right and left. this, the palace of an emperor; it seemed impossible to believe it. i wondered if the woman who had wanted for so many years to see it was disappointed. she was supporting my elbow, true chinese fashion, and tuan, having succeeded in passing on my camera to the usual ragged follower, was on the other side, as if i were in the last stages of decrepitude. at first this exceeding attention used to irritate me, but by this time i had resigned myself to my fate. i was more concerned at the shabbiness and sordidness of everything. of course no one save the servants, who keep the place, live in the grounds now, no one has lived there for over fifty years, not since 1860, when the reigning emperor fled there from the allies who sacked peking, and died there. perhaps it was for that reason that his secondary wife, the great dowager-empress whom all the world knew, disliked the place, and went there no more. i remembered that, as i stood between those two doors and wondered which i should go through first. the one to the left led to some courtyards surrounded by low, one-storied buildings—emperor's first bedroom—said tuan, and possibly he was right. i turned to the door on the right and as it opened i knew that these manchu pleasure-grounds had been planned, as so many things chinese are planned, nobly. i stepped out on to a plateau and there, there in this treeless china, was a grove of firs and pines. the blue sky peeped through the branches, the sunshine dappled the ground with shadow and light, and the wind 290murmured softly among the evergreen foliage. here was coolness and delight. beyond the plateau lay a long grassy valley surrounded by softly rounded, tree-clad hills, and right at the bottom of the valley was a lake with winding shores, a lake covered with lotus lilies, with islands on it, with bridges and buildings, picturesque as only the ideal chinese buildings can be picturesque. it may have been created by art, and at least art must have entered to some great extent into the making of the beauty, but there is no trace of it. my followers looked at the scene and looked at me, as much as to say this was something belonging to them they were showing me, and they hoped i was appreciating it properly. it might have been the manchu woman's very own. in truth i could only look and wonder, lost in admiration. what could the heart of man want more for the glorious summertime, the brief, hot summer of northern china?
0405
the first glance was a surprise, and the farther i went in the more my wonder grew. there were paved pathways, but they were not aggressively paved, the rough grey stones had just been sunk in the grass. they were broken a little now, and they toned naturally with the rural surroundings. there were lovely bridges bridging ravines, and here, too, was not one stone too many, nothing to suggest the artificial, that so often spoils the rural scene made to conform to the wants of the luxurious. of course, besides the pavement, other things had fallen into disrepair, there were steps down hill-sides that were well-nigh hopeless for purposes of ascent and descent, and there were temples where indeed the gods were forlorn and forgotten. gigantic gods they were 291with fearsome faces and painted in gorgeous colours, but they were all dusty and dirty. there was one temple all of bronze, but it was rusted and shabby. there were shrines in it set with agate and jasper, mother-of-pearl and jade, and what looked like great rubies, but, very likely, were only garnets. shabby, forlorn, forgotten was the temple, the steps that led up to it were broken and almost unusable, the courtyards were neglected, the tiles of the roof grass-grown, the woodwork of the doors perished, the walls falling, but the situation on the hill-side, embosomed in pines, with the beautiful lake at its feet and the wide vista of hills beyond, was superb, eternal.
on the day the missionaries arranged to come we made a picnic to this temple, i, and the two missionary women and our attendants, my servant, and their boy and the manchu amah and all the heterogeneous! following my boy always collected, and as we sat there at our open-air tiffin the gates were pushed open and in came the little chinese gentleman in his badly fitting foreign clothes.
“hallo, missus,” he said, and i forgot for a moment all the wonders that his people had done, that were here before my eyes.
he had come to fulfil his promise and show me round.
he was a flippant young gentleman impatient of the past, just as i have seen young men of his age, in western lands. he was only a boy, after all, and he threw stones at the birds just as a younger boy might have done in england. only i wished he wouldn't. it was nice to think the birds had sanctuary here, but i suppose it was a way of letting off steam, since he could not talk very easily to the 292foreign woman. a small red squirrel, sitting up deeply engaged with a nut from one of the fir-trees, roused him to wild excitement, and he shouted and yelled to a couple of dignified, petticoated chinamen on the other side of the lake, in a way that quite upset my ideas of chinese propriety; in fact, he was the general's secretary, showing off just as i have seen boys in other lands show off.
he took us to the women's temple, since we were interested in temples, a temple away on the other side of the lake, down in a hollow of the hills, hidden away as woman has been hidden away in china for immemorial ages.
“ladies' temple,” said our cicerone with a wave of his hand.
and it, too, is falling into decay, the dusty gods, ranged round the sacred place, remind one of the contents of a lumber-room, and “forgotten, forgotten,” is written large all over it. the forlorn old man in shabby blue, with a tiny little queue and a dirty face who keeps it, looks as if he too had been forgotten, and was grateful for a twenty-cent cumshaw. only the courtyard with the soft breeze rustling in the pine-trees and ringing the musical bells that hung from the eaves was peaceful in the afternoon sunshine, with a charm of its own.
what women have come and prayed here? the proud manchu empress whom her lord had neglected, the chinese concubine who longed to find favour in his eyes?
all over this pleasure-ground are buildings, but so deftly placed they never for one moment interfere with the charm of the countryside. there is a little temple on the golden mountain where the jehol river takes its rise in a spring; on another hill is a little look-out place or tea pagoda with the roof covered with tiles of imperial yellow, and a view from it that even an emperor is lucky to command. at the end of a long grassy glade where the deer were feeding in the shade of oaks and willows was a tall pagoda, and the emperor's library was in another little valley, hidden away behind high walls. we entered through a guard-house and came upon a small door in the high stone wall, and this door on the inner side appeared to be blocked not only by the trunk of a tree but by a huge rock. there was, however, just room for one person to pass round, and then we entered a shaded rock garden, which is all round the building that holds the library. the deep veranda was charming, on the hottest day one might sit, cool and secluded, reading here, and on each corner are exquisite bronze models of chinese ponies. the library itself, like most of these houses, was sealed up, and our young friend had not the key, but the lattice-work windows, and most of the walls are of lattice-work, for this is a summer palace, were down to the ground, and through the torn paper i could get a glimpse of what looked like another lumber-room, but that once must have been gorgeous with red lacquer and gold.
0411
always it was the same, desolation and dirt and ruin, and the young man who was showing us everything made as if he wished to impress upon us that it did not matter. he belonged to the modern world, and these were past and gone. but when we admired and were charmed and delighted i saw that he, too, was pleased.
there were the emperor's rooms opening into a courtyard close to the gate, there were his great audience halls down among a grove of firs, where probably he received lord macartney. highly scented white single peonies made fragrant the grass-grown courtyards, where great bronze gongs are the remnants of a past magnificence, and the rooms are many of them empty, for all they are so carefully sealed. there were more rooms for the emperor on an island in the lily-covered lake; and reached by bridges that are taken up in june and july and boats substituted, and farthest away of all, at the very end of the lake, were the rooms of the empress.
“happiness hall” the emperor kwang hsi wrote on it with his own hands, or so our guide told us, and there to this day the golden characters remain. did they speak the truth, i wonder. at that particular period, i believe, the empress counted for a great deal more than the emperor, so possibly at least the envious emperor felt he was speaking the truth; but, as a rule, it is difficult to think that the woman who shared the dragon throne could have been happy. it is difficult to believe that any woman in china can be happy, she counts for so little even now.
the courtyards were like all the other courtyards, with great gongs of ningpo work and bronze vases, and shaded by picturesque pine-trees, only here was an innovation. in a sheltered corner, hidden away from the sight of all, by high walls and green shrubs, was the bathing-place of the court ladies, and on the other side their theatre.
the emperor had a theatre not far from the gate of the pleasure-grounds, a great place all falling into decay, and here they had a play for the entertainment 295of their guests, when the first british ambassador came here, and it is evident that the women were allowed to be present, even though they were behind a screen, for sir george staunton relates that the only foreigner, seen by these secluded women, was george staunton aged thirteen, the page to the embassy, who was led on to a platform by a eunuch, so that the wives and concubines of the emperor might see what a barbarian from the islands of the far western sea looked like.
but here, close to her rooms, and by her bathing-place, the empress had her own private theatre, and i wondered what manner of play could interest such secluded ladies, such narrow lives.
wonderful to relate both the theatre and the roof of the rooms showed signs of having been recently done up. the rumour ran that after the revolution in february 1912, the court thought of retiring here, and these recent repairs in a place that has been untouched for years give colour to the rumour. we asked our guide as we sat at afternoon tea on the veranda looking out at the sunlight coming through the fir-trees that make the approach to “happiness hall,” but he shook his head. he knew nothing about it. he was a most circumspect young man and never did know anything, he felt perhaps it was wisest not.
oh but it was sad the waste here. all these dwelling-places dotted about in the valley, on hillside, hidden away in groves of trees, are of one story, they are summer palaces, but the rooms are well-proportioned, and with their wide verandas and their lattice-work walls down to the ground, must have been delightful to live in, and they were furnished as 296an emperor's palace should be furnished. there were chairs unlike the usual chinese chairs, comfortable chairs of red lacquer and blackwood, and they were inlaid with cloisonne work, with carved jade, with delightful patterns in mother-of-pearl, there were stools, there were tables, there were low k'ang tables of lacquer, and all were perished with the sun and the wind; of not one piece has any care been taken. some of the rooms were empty, some were full of packing-cases hiding i know not what treasures; judging by those perishing chairs and tables that were left out, i should imagine something worth possessing. can it be only fifty years since an emperor came here, it might be two hundred judging by the state of decay everything was in, and yet, when all was said and done, this place struck me as being the most magnificent pleasure-ground, the most beautifully situated, the most beautifully planned, that i have ever seen, worth, and more than worth, the arduous journey through the mountains that i had taken to see it.
it is supposed to be cut off from the people, and it is i suppose, judging by the joy the mission servants expressed at getting a chance to see it.
“all my life,” said the amah, “i have served in manchu families, and yet see, it is through a foreigner i come here,” and it was as if the seeing had crowned her life. but still there is a little dribbling in of the favoured few of the lower classes. it may be they were the palace servants who speared great black bass in the lake. it might have been they who carried out baskets of lily root and sold them with the fish outside. i bought bass easily enough for my hostess, great things still alive and bleeding from women's temple.
sometimes there are rumours of art treasures sold from the palace, and then again it is contradicted: but i wondered, as i looked at those great baskets of lily roots that were constantly going outside, if here were not an excellent way to conceal contraband. it may be though that the guards at the gate are not to be bought, and possibly i do them an injustice.
0417
i had written this and felt apologetic for my suspicions of the humble guard, forgetting that this is china, where anything may happen, when before my book could go to press a greater than the guard, no less a person than the premier himself, hsiung hsi ling, the great tartar general, was accused of taking away the precious curios from jehol. he had brought away curios valued at tens of thousands of pounds but he succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of the president that he had brought them away only that they might be stored in one of the great museums in peking, where not only could they be cared for, but they might be seen by far more people. again i thought of the babylonish gentleman. doubtless he, too, would have moved the nation's treasures from one place to another without saying by your leave to any man. to whom was he responsible? perhaps to the king upon the throne. hardly to him, if his army was strong and faithful.
we lingered on the veranda of the empress's house over our afternoon tea—wherever we went hot water was procurable—and the sunshine came through the branches of the pines and firs, the great willows dipped their weeping branches in the clear waters of the lake, the deep blue of the sky contrasted 298with the green of the pine-needles, and a long snake came slowly, slowly, through the grass to take his daily drink, unperturbed, though all the servants and the german girl and i ran to look at him. he knew he was quite safe, no one would harm a sacred snake. a small eagle screamed from the rocks above, there was the mourning of a dove, the plaintive cry of a hoopoe, and a chattering black and white magpie looked on. a tiny blue kingfisher, like a jewel, fluttered on to a stone, and a bird something like a thrush, sang sweetly and loudly as the evening shadows lengthened. a great blue crane, tall almost as a man flew slowly across the water, and the brown deer clustered in the glades and began to feed. truly it was an ideal spot up among the barren hills of inner mongolia, this park enclosed by miles of high wall and still carefully guarded and jealously secluded by the republic as it was by the manchus. when france became a republic they threw open her palaces and desecrated her most holy places. not so here in the unchanging east. what was secluded and difficult of entrance in manchu times is secluded and entered only by favour still. china absorbs the present and clings to the past. are they past for ever those dead and gone rulers who made these pleasure-grounds?
their last representative is a little boy hidden away in the heart of peking, hardly realising yet what he has lost.
“if he comes again,” said a chinese gentleman, “he will be emperor by force of arms.”
will the power come back to him? i can no more believe that the chinese will become a modern nation, forgetting these glories of their past, than could the women's bathing place. 299prophet believe that the lord would leave his chosen people in captivity.
0421
“i will bring again the captivity of my people of israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them.
“and i will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled out of their land, which i have given them, saith the lord thy god.”
and we from the mission wended our way back through the dusty, dirty, commonplace streets, and the little gentleman who had been our guide, much to his relief, i am sure, for he spoke little english, and he would not speak chinese, turned off at the yamen.